Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Open Education Under Seige?

Following on the heels of the recent federal lawsuit against Apple
and several publishers for allegedly colluding to set book prices,
three of the largest educational publishers, Pearson, Cengage Learning,
and Macmillan Higher Education, last week sued Boundless Learning, one
of the newest entrants in the production of open education materials.

According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, the publishers
charge that Boundless Learning simply paraphrases their texts, and that,
in doing so, “the young company, which produces open-education
alternatives to printed textbooks, has stolen the creative expression of
their authors and editors, violating their intellectual-property
rights.”

Notwithstanding whatever
use it claims to make of ‘open source educational content,’ Defendant
distributes ‘replacement textbooks’ that are created from, based upon,
and overwhelmingly similar to Plaintiffs’ textbooks, [and] “Whether in
the lecture hall or in a textbook, anyone is obviously free to teach the
subjects biology, economics, or psychology, and can do so using,
creating, and refining the pedagogical materials they think best,
whether consisting of ‘open source educational content’ or otherwise.
But by making unauthorized ‘shadow-versions’ of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted
works, Defendant teaches only the age-old business model of theft.

The Chronicle further reported that Ariel Diaz, the head of
Boundless Learning, said that the publishers are “wrongfully claiming
ownership of open knowledge” and that the publishers are trying to
create a monopoly.

But it is not difficult to see that the publishers
may have concerns beyond those raised by copyright infringement: According to Boundless Learning,
their resources have been accessed by students at more than 1000
universities across the nation. This could seriously cut into the profit
margin of the traditional textbook market.

Why This Case is Important

Regardless of the financial considerations, this case raises
important questions about the Open Education movement and its reliance
on unlicensed resources. Open Education and open resources have the
potential to revolutionize and democratize access to learning, reducing
or even eliminating textbook costs for millions of students, which is
especially important as the costs of higher education continue to rise
and outpace the incomes of those who want to earn college degrees.

However, serious consideration of the way that open education
resources might have an impact on the rights of the creators on shared
content is only just beginning. In many ways, this is similar to the
controversy over downloaded music, which emerged in the late 1990s and
early 2000s, upon the creation of Mp3 players.

Recording artists argued
that music-sharing sites, such as Napster, eMusic, and others were
actually violating copyright law when they allowed users to download
protected content such as songs and albums.

The issue was resolved
somewhat with the creation of sites such as iTunes, which charge users
for downloaded songs. In the case of textbooks, the publishers are
arguing that open education resources created by other parties but based
on copyrighted works are a similar infringement on copyright law.

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ABOUT ME

Dr Robert Muller is an experienced, and well-published author, teacher and researcher who has been teaching and conducting research in Sociology, Criminology, Politics and Public Health in the university sector since 1993. In addition, Robert has been teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) since 1984 in a range of different cultures, including Turkey, Italy, England, and Australia.